Dr Dina ElHarouni
A Group Leader in Computational Neuro-Oncology and Evolutionary Precision Medicine at Heidelberg University Hospital and the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ).
Dr Dina ElHarouni
Dr Dina ElHarouni
About
Dina ElHarouni is a Group Leader in Computational Neuro-Oncology and Evolutionary Precision Medicine at Heidelberg University Hospital and the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ). During her postdoctoral training at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and the Broad Institute, Dr. ElHarouni focused on large-scale computational analysis of patient-derived cancer models. Her work during this period centered on contributions to the Human Cancer Models Initiative, including integrative analyses of patient-derived models and their relevance for therapeutic vulnerability discovery. She was also a 2025 AACR Women in Cancer Research Scholar Awardee during her postdoctoral training. Dr. ElHarouni earned her PhD in Clinical Bioinformatics from the German Cancer Research Center (DKFZ), where she developed therapy-response scoring frameworks and identified multi-omics biomarkers in pediatric solid tumors. She holds a BSc in Pharmacy and an MSc in Pharmacology and Pharmacogenomics from the German University in Cairo. She was selected to participate in the 70th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting and served as an elected Junior Representative within the Helmholtz Association.
Current research
In her current role, her group advances functional precision medicine at the intersection of systems therapeutics, pharmacology, and clinical decision intelligence.
Future research vision
ElHarouni will continue her research career in the area of precision medicine, combining AI, patient-derived models and clinical metadata. She aims to develop intelligent decision-making systems that can be applied across several molecular board setups and precision programs. She would also like to establish a comprehensive atlas of patient profile responses to bridge the gap between in-vivo and ex-vivo omics and therapeutic profiles, to dissect complex biological processes using interaction networks in a temporal manner.
Key publications

ElHarouni, D et al. iTReX: Interactive exploration of mono- and combination therapy dose response profiling data. Pharmacological Research, 2022.  

Gatzweiler, C et al. Functional therapeutic target validation using pediatric zebrafish xenograft models. Cancers, 2022.

Berker, Y et al. Patient-by-Patient Deep Transfer Learning forDrug-Response Profiling Using Confocal Fluorescence Microscopy of Pediatric Patient-Derived Tumor-Cell Spheroids. IEEE Transactions on medical imaging, 2022.

D ElHarouni, D et al. A pharmacogenetic study of VDR fok1 and TYMS polymorphisms and their association with glucocorticoid-induced osteonecrosis in Egyptian children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Frontiers in Oncology, 2018.

Adwan, H et al. Early Metastasis in Colorectal Cancer Poses an Option for New Diagnostic and Treatment Strategies. Cancer Metastasis, 2018.

Key awards

Was 2025 AACR Women in Cancer Research Scholar Awardee during her postdoctoral training.

Was selected to participate in the 70th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting and served as an elected Junior Representative within the Helmholtz Association.

COMPASS EraPerMed Fund.

UNITEglioblastoma fellowship, Spezialforschungsbereiche Fund.

Erasmus Summer Program Fellow, Rotterdam Medical Center.

Presidential Leadership Program Fellow, National Training Academy (Egypt).

Youth Olympic Games Quota (10m air rifle shooting), International Olympic Committee.

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